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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Nokia smartphone sales is taking off

The smartphone sales by Nokia have quarter after quarter delivered increasingly disappointing numbers. Now, only one month after Nokia decided to give up its phone division to Microsoft, there are indications that the Nokia smartphones are finally taking off.

Two years ago, Nokia decided to partner up with Microsoft in favor of their own Symbian OS. This essentially meant that overnight, new Nokia smartphones would be operating on Windows Phone operating system instead. At that time, Nokia was in a critical situation with competition pushing it hard from the iOS and Android camps. Nokia hoped that the partnership with Microsoft would allow it to once again become a significant player on the market, after all, it was not too long ago that Nokia was the clear dominating brand in terms of smartphones and cell phones. As the years went, the market reception of the Nokia smartphones based on Windows Phone has been less than ideal and massive losses were reported quarter after quarter. In the end, the smartphone market share became very low, almost negligible with only a few percent. Eventually, on September 3, 2013, Microsoft acquired the whole mobile phone division from Nokia.

The market today is completely dominated by Android with a market share of 70% and Apple iPhones with a market share of approximately 20%. However, recent data show that Nokia phones may finally take off, at least in Europe.

Recent data compiled by Kantar Worldpanel show that during the 3 summer months (June to August), Windows phone sales accounted for 9% of the total smartphones sold in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Out of these 9%, almost all could be attributed to Nokia. Windows phone in general did the best in the UK where it accounted for 12% of new smartphones sold and in Germany, the Windows smartphones numbers were only 1% below the iPhone sales numbers.

Of course, the above numbers were during a relatively quiet season and by themselves mean nothing. But it still brings up some hope for Nokia and Windows Phone in general. Considering that the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C were released very recently, it will definitely be interesting to see if the market shares of Windows Phone and Nokia will be sustained or if it is a temporary thing.